88 THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN 
If you want to see science on its more purely material side 
you can take the German nation. I should like to tell you 
about the development of science in Germany. You know, 
no doubt, that at the present time there is no nation in the 
world which has developed science so thoroughly, which 
has applied it so closely to national life as Germany. And 
this has been a very rapid achievement. At the beginning 
of the nineteenth century Germany was not in any way 
conspicuous in science. The development took place after 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century had passed. But 
since that time it has developed with marvellous rapidity 
and has produced material results in Germany of the most 
imposing character. It is really remarkable to read things 
that were written of Germany so late as 1840. The great 
Liebig, the person much more than any other who is respon- 
sible for giving impulse to the teaching of science, in that 
year published a paper in which he speaks in the most 
deploring terms of the position of his own science in Prussia. 
He says that in that time there was not a single teaching labor- 
atory. The whole enthusiasm of the learning world was for 
literary and classical studies. He commended science not 
only for its own sake but for the profits which certainly came 
through it to national life, and he remarked that ‘in fifty 
years the neglect of science would be looked back upon 
with incredulity and a smile of pity’. Considering that 
condition of things it is nothing less than marvellous to 
regard the condition of German science to-day. If we take 
the whole range of science, physical and biological, I think 
it can be affirmed that there is no country in the world where 
there is so much activity, so many workers, so much State 
endowment, and so great an output of publication. It is, I 
should like to say, the great number of scientific men that 
is the noteworthy feature. I do not say for a moment that 
they are greater scientific men than those of other countries. 
